Your Question: Who or what has been eating my Easter Eggs?
This week, the Discovery Centre was sent some pictures of Easter eggs. It's a sad story: they'd been gnawed, and not by their rightful owner (who was very interested to find out who the culprit was).
Gnawed Easter chocolates
Image: Anonymous
Source: Anonymous
Usually we need to see a specimen or a photograph of an animal in order to identify it, but the chocolate thief had left behind a clue – teeth marks.
Gnawed Easter chocolate
Image: Anonymous
Source: Anonymous
We sent the photographs to Museum Victoria's Senior Curator of Mammals. He examined the marks and reported that they had been made by the incisors of a small rodent, most likely a House Mouse, Mus musculus. His identification came with another sad story – his own chocolate Bilby had suffered the same fate!
A House Mouse, Mus musculus
Image: Rodney Start
Source: Museum Victoria
Rodents have very distinctive teeth – a pair of incisors in the upper jaw and another pair in the lower jaw. The incisors grow continuously (like our fingernails), so rodents have to do a lot of gnawing to grind them down. In fact, the name "rodent" comes from the Latin words "gnaw" (rodere) and "tooth" (dentis). The gnawing process also acts to sharpen the incisors.
The skull of a House Mouse, Mus musculus
Image: Marnie Rawlinson, Cathy Accurso and Ken Walker
Source: Museum Victoria
Wild House Mice are primarily granivorous (they eat grains and seeds), but they will eat almost anything. It seems that, like us, they love chocolate.
Happy Easter House Mice!
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Links:
Introduced Rodents
Collections Online: Easter